September 30/09 13:10 pm - Caracol de Pista Championship - Day 1

Posted by on 09/30/09

It was with lots of long days of travel and some red-eye flights that Monique Sullivan, Laura Brown, and David Boily arrived in Medellin, Colombia for the 2009 edition of the Caracol de Pista Championship. David travelled home from road worlds in Switzerland on September 27 and then departed for Bogota the next day where he spent the night and met up with Laura Brown having taken the red-eye from Houston to Bogota. The next morning was a short 45 minute flight into Medellin and finally meeting up with Monique Sullivan who had arrived the day before.

The Caracol de Pista has been run for a number of years and takes place on the Martin “Cochise” Rodriguez velodrome that was built in 1958. It is a 250m outdoor concrete track and this year will host a who’s who of track cycling. There are countless current and past World and Olympic Champions. Racing in this three day event will be among others Greg Bauge from France (current World Sprint Champion) along with team mates Kevin Sireau, and former World Keirin champ Clara Sanchez. Craig MacLean from Great Britain is back competing and the former World and Olympic medalist will be one to watch along with Dutchman Teun Mulder, Malaysia’s Josiah Ing, Cuban World Champ Lisandra Geurrero, Italians Roberta Chiappa, Georgina Bronzini and Lisa Frisoni.

On the endurance side there is Argentinean Olympic gold winner Walter Perez, Hayden Roulsten the Omnium World Champ from New Zealand and road racing star Victor Hugo Pena. All of these riders and more have had multiple World Cup, World Championship and Olympic medals to their palmares.

The format of the event is that teams will be made up from various nations and don local sponsors jerseys to race in a team format in sprint and endurance events over the three evenings of racing. The Canadian contingent of Brown, Sullivan, and Boily will be racing for Shimano with Barry Forde from Barbados and yet to be named riders. The events will consist of men’s and women’s sprint tournaments, scratch races, eliminations, 500m chariot races, keirins, points races, a crazy combination tempo/elimination race into a scratch race with points on final lap, and a Madison for the men.

Racing will start at 7pm on Thursday October 1 and the riders will be fighting it out for over $20,000 in prize money. The experience gained by our Canadian riders will be invaluable in their development.